Thousands of Chinese legislators erupted into enthusiastic applause on Monday over plans to give President Xi Jinping a lifetime mandate to mould the Asian giant into a global superpower. China’s rubber-stamp parliament met in the imposing Great Hall of the People for an annual session that will make Xi the most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, concentrating the growing might of the military, economy and state in the hands of one man. As Xi looked on from a stage dominated by mostly male party leaders in dark suits, a constitutional amendment to scrap the two-term limit for the presidency was read out to the chamber, prompting fervent applause.

Emails and documents an anonymous group leaked to HuffPost this week appear to show a Los Angeles lawyer asking for more than $ 80 million to scuttle a Department of Justice investigation into a multibillion-dollar scandal involving Van Gogh paintings, the movie “The Wolf of Wall Street,” the prime minister of Malaysia — and the lawyer’s husband, a Republican National Committee deputy finance chair Elliott Broidy, trying to use his influence with the Trump administration to help. Broidy and his wife, attorney Robin Rosenzweig, deny any wrongdoing. “It’s definitely a hack,” Rosenzweig said of the emails, which were first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Puerto Rico’s power grid broke down again on Thursday, leaving some 800,000 customers without power, as the US Caribbean possession struggles to recover five months after Hurricane Maria slammed the island. Justo Gonzalez, head of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), said that one of the island’s main transmission lines was out of service. The government-owned utility has 1.5 customers out of a population of 3.5 million — not counting the 500,000 Puerto Ricans who left since Maria struck on September 20, 2017.